When you’re a horror-film legend like George A. Romero, you’ve got certain clout. And Romero used that clout to not only decline a chance to work on AMC’s The Walking Dead, but to let the world know via an interview with Britain’s The Big Issuethat he didn’t want to get associated with “a soap opera with a zombie occasionally.”

Ouch.

Romero revealed that he was asked to make a couple of episodes of the hugely popular hit series, but declined. “I always used the zombie as a character for satire or a political criticism and I find that missing in what’s happening now,” the creator of Night of the Living Dead said.

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But it wasn’t just The Walking Dead that had Romero thinking about the current trend among zombies, saying the idea of using “fast-moving” zombies is akin to “army ants” and against everything we have known about the role in the past.

He also added that his idea of a zombie was a living person put into some sort of trance to serve as a slave. In his mind, he was raising the dead, an event that ties back to Jesus. Don’t get confused, though, folks. The current zombie trend has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. We don’t need Romero to tell us that.